Re:Ask HN: Why is functional programming not more popular?
by valand on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @08:15PM
(#21458798)
Agreed with most of this comment, except:
> People think imperatively most of the time.
Most of the time people think declaratively. Heck, people dream, wish, and plan declaratively. They wouldn't even know how they got to their thoughts and dreams. They're just there instantly.
Together with
* Imperative/OOP programming works. All kinds of cool software have been built using those paradigms.
that means that few people have a pressing need to look into functional programming. Some who are curious do. Some of those love it and don't want to go back.
But there's nothing wrong with not doing functional programming!
And last
* Both C++ and Java have adopted (or stolen) quite a few things from functional programming languages.
The FP purist will say that it doesn't matter, but it really does. They stole those parts that get their users maybe a quarter the way to functional nirvana, but with very little effort. That's obviously enough to succeed.